Lady C refuses I’m A Celeb trial because cousin was buried alive

Lady Colin Campbell is one of the contestants in I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! (Picture courtesy ITV Picture Desk)

Published:08:09Thursday 19 November 2015

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Lady Colin Campbell, owner of one of Sussex’s few Grade 1-listed secular buildings, has refused to take part in a trial on I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!

On Monday night’s show, viewers voted for ‘Lady C’, as she has become known, to take part in the challenge, after watching her dine on unusual dishes in the first Bushtucker Trial.

But last night, they saw the royal biographer and owner of Castle Goring, near Worthing, refuse to enter the Panic Pit – which would have involved crawling through a tunnel before being surrounded by creepy-crawlies and snakes for up to ten minutes.

The 66-year-old told hosts Ant and Dec: “I’m not starting it, sorry. I have a cousin who was murdered by being buried alive, I’m not doing anything that is coffin like or involves coffins.”

Lady Colin, whose work includes biographies of Diana, Princess of Wales, and the Queen Mother, is believed to have bought Castle Goring, a Grade 1-listed country house and one of Worthing’s architechtural gems, for £700,000 in 2013.

The property had been marketed for offers in excess of £500,000 and, at the time, the Herald reported how the successful purchaser would need considerable finances to restore Castle Goring to its former glory after the ravages of more than 200 years – the sum was estimated to be in the region of £2million, with tens of thousands needing to be spent on the castle’s roof alone.

Grade 1-listed Castle Goring

Castle Goring is understood to be the only large house in Sussex built by the Shelley family. Sir Bysshe Shelley, grandfather of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, commissioned the property. Its construction took some 15 years after the property was first commissioned in the 1790s.

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